1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to tobacco smoking devices. In particular, it relates to cigars and to a tool for opening blockages inside a cigar to allow proper drawing of the cigar.
2. Background Art
The tobacco industry provides a number of products. Some products, like cigarettes and pipes, use relatively finely and or uniformly ground tobacco. When tobacco is cut in this manner, the tobacco provides a relatively consistent draw which allows each cigarette or pipe to draw in the same manner for each smoke.
Cigars, on the other hand, are manufactured in a variety of ways. They may be made by machine, or in the case of more expensive brands, they may also be made by hand. The size and shape of the pieces of tobacco in a cigar will also vary. It is this variation in the tobacco filler used to manufacture cigars that causes irregularities in drawing performance and even cause failure of the cigar to draw at all. Cigars that draw poorly or do not draw at all are often discarded by the smoker, or returned to the manufacturer for a refund. Since cigars may be relatively expensive, the problems caused by drawing failure will create either an unnecessary expense to the smoker, or lost profits to the manufacturer who accepts return of the defective cigars.
The drawing problems are usually caused by the tobacco fill material. Sometimes the tobacco fragments in the fill material in a cigar can be substantially large. They may block a portion of the air passage through which smoke passes, and may even block the air passage entirely if the fragment is large enough. When this happens, the cigar is unusable or usable only with difficulty.
This undesired side effect of the manufacturing techniques used to manufacture cigars, namely the unevenness of drawing smoke through the cigar, results in a situation where the same box of cigars may contain several cigars that draw in an easy and desirable fashion, some that draw with some difficulty, and some that may not draw at all. This leads to a situation where the smoker may be inconvenienced and the manufacturer may lose future sales or incur losses due to returns. It would be desirable to provide a method of increasing the drawing capability of a cigar, when necessary, such that heretofore unusable cigars could be enjoyed by a smoker.
An associated manufacturing problem is the reduction in drawing capability of a cigar due to the filler tobacco in the cigar being too tightly packed during the bunching or manufacturing process. In this situation, there may not be any overly large fragments of tobacco fill, but the limited open space due to the tight packing is such that airflow through the cigar is restricted. Smokers will have the same difficulty in drawing smoke through a tightly packed cigar as they had in the foregoing situation where the tobacco fragments acted as barriers. Another possible draw restriction could be due to overly moist tobaccao which is caused storing the tobacco in improper humidity. In like fashion, it would be desirable to provide a method of increasing the drawing capability of a tightly packed cigar, or a cigar with overly moist tobacco, when necessary, such that the heretofore unusable cigar could be enjoyed by a smoker.
In the past, the smoker's only recourse was to either throw away the cigar entirely, or to cut off segments of the cigar until a portion that was usable was reached. This may result in only a small portion of the cigar that is available for use. Further, if more than one blockage exists in the cigar, then cutting off segments of the cigar may not effect the drawing capability of the cigar. As a result, a smoker has limited recourse when trying to smoke a poorly drawing cigar.
The prior art has failed to provide a tool which is inexpensive to manufacture, has a minimum number of parts, is easy to use, and which effectively creates an air passage through the cigar to allow adequate drawing capability.